In 1732, Francis Marion was born on his family's plantation in Berkeley County, South Carolina.[1] Around the age of 15, he hired on a ship bound for the West Indies which sank on his first voyage; the crew escaped on a lifeboat but had to spend one week at sea before reaching land.[1] During the following years, Marion managed the family's plantation.[1]

Marion began his military career shortly before his 25th birthday. On January 1, 1757, Francis and his brother, Job were recruited by Captain John Postell to serve in the French and Indian War and to drive the Cherokee Indians away from the border.[citation needed] In 1761, Marion served as a lieutenant under Captain William Moultrie in a campaign against the Cherokee which destroyed many Indian villages and burned crops to starve the Cherokee into surrendering. During these events, the British and Colonials served as allies.

A British expedition under Henry Clinton moved into South Carolina in the early Spring of 1780 and laid siege to Charleston. Marion was not captured with the rest of the garrison when Charleston fell on May 12, 1780, because he had broken an ankle in an accident and had left the city to recuperate. Clinton took part of the British army that had captured Charleston back to New York but a significant number stayed for operations under Lord Cornwallis in the Carolinas.

After the loss in Charleston, the defeats of General Isaac Huger at Moncks Corner and Lieutenant Colonel Abraham Buford at the Waxhaw massacre (near the North Carolina border, in what is now Lancaster County), Marion organized a small unit, which at first consisted of between 20 and 70 men and was the only force then opposing the British Army in the state. At this point, Marion was still nearly crippled from the slowly healing ankle.

Marion joined Major General Horatio Gates just before the Battle of Camden but Gates had no confidence in him and sent him (mostly to get rid of him) to take command of the Williamsburg Militia in the Pee Dee area.[citation needed] Gates asked him to undertake scouting missions and to impede the expected flight of the British after the battle. Marion thus missed the battle, which proved to be a decisive British victory.

Marion showed himself to be a singularly able leader of irregular militiamen and ruthless in his terrorising of Loyalists. Unlike the Continental troops, Marion's Men, as they were known, served without pay, supplied their own horses, arms and often their food.[2][3]

Marion rarely committed his men to frontal warfare, but repeatedly surprised larger bodies of Loyalists or British regulars with quick surprise attacks and equally quick withdrawal from the field. After the surrender of Charleston, the British garrisoned South Carolina with help from local Tories, except for Williamsburg (the present Pee Dee), which they were never able to hold. The British made one attempt to garrison Williamsburg at Willtown, but were driven out by Marion at the Battle of Black Mingo.

Cornwallis observed "Colonel Marion had so wrought the minds of the people, partly by the terror of his threats and cruelty of his punishments, and partly by the promise of plunder, that there was scarcely an inhabitant between the Santee and the Pee Dee that was not in arms against us".[4]

The British especially hated Marion and made repeated efforts to neutralize his force, but Marion's intelligence gathering was excellent and that of the British was poor, due to the overwhelming Patriot loyalty of the populace in the Williamsburg area.

Colonel Banastre Tarleton was sent to capture or kill Marion in November 1780; he despaired of finding the "old swamp fox", who eluded him by travelling along swamp paths. It was Tarleton who gave Marion his nom de guerre when, after unsuccessfully pursuing Marion's troops for over 26 miles through a swamp, he gave up and swore "[a]s for this damned old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him."[5] Once Marion had shown his ability at guerrilla warfare, making himself a serious nuisance to the British, Gov. John Rutledge (in exile in North Carolina) commissioned him a brigadier general of state troops.

Marion was also tasked with combating groups of freed slaves working or fighting alongside the British. He received an order from the Governor of South Carolina, to execute any blacks suspected of carrying provisions or gathering intelligence for the enemy "agreeable to the laws of this State".[6]

When Major General Nathanael Greene took command in the South, Marion and Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee were ordered in January 1781, to attack Georgetown but were unsuccessful. In April they took Fort Watson and in May they captured Fort Motte, and succeeded in breaking communications between the British posts in the Carolinas. On August 31, Marion rescued a small American force trapped by 500 British soldiers, under the leadership of Major C. Fraser. For this action he received the thanks of the Continental Congress. Marion commanded the right wing under General Greene at the Battle of Eutaw Springs.

In January 1782, he was elected to a new State Assembly at Jacksonborough and left his troops to take up his seat.[7] During his absence his brigade grew disheartened, particularly after a British sortie from Charleston, and there was reportedly a conspiracy to turn him over to the British. But in June of that year, he put down a Loyalist uprising on the banks of the Pee Dee River. In August he left his brigade and returned to his plantation. In 1782, the British Parliament suspended offensive operations in America, and in December 1782, the British withdrew their garrison from Charleston. The war was brought to an end by the Treaty of Paris.

Marion returned to his plantation to find it had been burnt during the fighting. His slaves had run away to fight for the British and had later been evacuated from Charleston. He had to borrow money to restock his plantation with slaves.[8]

After the war, Marion married his cousin, Mary Esther Videau.[9] His nephew Theodore had hinted to his uncle that it was time to get married. His relatives and friends informed him that Mary always listened with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes when anyone began reciting the exploits of the Swamp Fox. Marion was in love earlier with Mary Esther Simons but she refused his proposal and married Jack Holmes.[10][verification needed]

The public memory of Francis Marion has been shaped in large part by the first biography about him, The Life of General Francis Marion[12] written by M. L. Weems (also known as Parson Weems, 1756–1825) based on the memoirs of South Carolina officer Peter Horry.[1] The New York Times has described Weems as one of the "early hagiographers" of American literature "who elevated the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, into the American pantheon".[13] Weems is known for having invented the apocryphal "cherry tree" anecdote about George Washington and "Marion's life received similar embellishment", as Amy Crawford wrote in Smithsonian Magazine in 2007.[1]

In the 1835 novel Horse-Shoe Robinson by John Pendleton Kennedy, a historical romance set against the background of the Southern campaigns in the American revolution, Marion appears and interacts with the fictional characters. In the book he is depicted as decisive, enterprising and valiant.

Walt Disney Productions produced an eight-episode mini-series about Marion, The Swamp Fox, aired 1959–1961. It starred Leslie Nielsen as Marion, and Nielsen also sang the catchy theme song. The series depicted Marion's nephew Gabriel Marion being killed by Loyalists.

Francis Marion was one of the influences for the main character of Benjamin Martin in the 2000 movie The Patriot, which according to Crawford "exaggerated the Swamp Fox legend for a whole new generation".[1] The contrast between the film's depiction of Martin "as a family man and hero who single-handedly defeats countless hostile Brits" and the real-life Marion was one of the "egregious oversights" that TIME magazine cited when listing "The Patriot" as number one of its "Top 10 historically misleading films" in 2011.[14] In the film, the fictional character Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) describes violence he committed in the French and Indian War.

Around the time of The Patriot '​s release, comments in the British press challenged the American notion of Francis Marion as a hero. In the Evening Standard, British author Neil Norman called Francis Marion "a thoroughly unpleasant dude who was, basically, a terrorist".[15]

Concurrently British historian Christopher Hibbert described Marion as "... very active in the persecution of the Cherokee Indians and not at all the sort of chap who should be celebrated as a hero. The truth is that people like Marion committed atrocities as bad, if not worse, than those perpetrated by the British."[16] Hibbert also stated that Francis Marion had "a reputation as a racist who hunted Indians for sport and regularly raped his female slaves".[17]

In a commentary published in the National Review, conservative talk radio host Michael Graham rejected criticisms like Hibbert's as an attempt to rewrite history:

Was Francis Marion a slave owner? Was he a determined and dangerous warrior? Did he commit acts in an 18th-century war that we would consider atrocious in the current world of peace and political correctness? As another great American film hero might say: "You damn right."

Michael Graham also refers to what he describes as "the unchallenged work of South Carolina's premier historian Dr. Walter Edgar, who pointed out in his 1998 'South Carolina: A History' that Marion's partisans were "a ragged band of both black and white volunteers."

British historian Hugh Bicheno has compared Gen. Marion with British officers Tarleton and Maj. James Wemyss; referring to the British officers as well as Marion, Bicheno wrote: “...they all tortured prisoners, hanged fence-sitters, abused parole and flags of truce, and shot their own men when they failed to live up to the harsh standards they set.”[18]

According to Crawford, the biographies by historians William Gilmore Simms (“The Life of Francis Marion”) and Hugh Rankin can be regarded as accurate.[1] The introduction to the 2007 edition of Simms' book (originally published in 1844) was written by Sean Busick, a professor of American history at Athens State University in Alabama, who says that based on the facts, "Marion deserves to be remembered as one of the heroes of the War for Independence."[1]

“Francis Marion was a man of his times: he owned slaves, and he fought in a brutal campaign against the Cherokee Indians ... Marion's experience in the French and Indian War prepared him for more admirable service."[1]

In Washington, D.C., Marion Park is one of the four "major" or large parks in the Capitol Hill Parks constellation. The park is bounded by 4th & 6th Streets and at the intersection of E Street and South Carolina Avenue in southeast Washington, D.C.[19]

In 1850, the painter William Tylee Ranny (1813–1857) produced Marion Crossing the Pee Dee, based on events following the battle of Camden in the American Revolution. The picture, displayed at the Amon Carter Museum, depicts Marion sitting on a horse and talking with a subordinate on the back row of a small boat, Marion being second from the left.[20]

Sacred to the memory
of
GEN. FRANCIS MARION,
who departed this life on the 27th February 1795
in the sixty-third year of his age
deeply regretted by all his fellow-citizens.
History will record his worth and rising generations
embalm his memory as one of the most distinguished
PATRIOTS AND HEROES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
which elevated his native country to honor and independence
and secured to her the blessings of liberty and peace.
This tribute of veneration and gratitude is erected in
commemoration of the noble and disinterested virtues
of the citizen and the gallant exploits of the soldier
who lived without fear and died without reproach.

Historic Marker at the burial site of General Francis Marion "Swamp Fox"

Historic Marker at the burial site of General Francis Marion "Swamp Fox"

Informative Sign at the burial site of General Francis Marion "Swamp Fox"

Informative Sign at the burial site of General Francis Marion "Swamp Fox"

^Gray, Jefferson (Autumn 2011). "Up from the swamp: Francis Marion turned South Carolina's Low Country into a quagmire for the British and became one of history's greatest guerrilla leaders.". MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History24 (1): 56–65.